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14 December 2012

I love antique stores, and I can't say no when I see sparkly old brooches and earrings. My sister found these for me in an antique store in Seattle, and they sat around for awhile until I had the time to start making tiaras again! The central piece is a rhinestone brooch in a beautiful star burst design. The solid rhinestone circular pieces to either side are clip-on earrings. The base of the tiara is a rhinestone necklace. All the pieces are older, maybe some from over 50 years ago, I'd guess. They are all unmarked costume jewelry pieces.

The tiara sparkles beautifully in the light, and is the most classical Empress-style tiara I've ever made. It's perfect for weddings.

I love these acrylic pink flower beads, and I made a large flower tiara using them. Pink is a girl's color, and for good reason! It's a very girly floral tiara perfect for weddings or even for the flower girl to wear!

Craft stores have a huge supply of glittery stuff, and I always go crazy and buy a bunch a stuff whenever I'm in a craft store. Luckily, all that gaudy glittery stuff comes in handy at Christmastime, where all that stuff is normal, and even preferred.

Okay, so officially, I have made my first two hats, and my shop is supposed to be exclusively tiaras...so I compromise by still calling these hair accessories, because they are, after all. With the theme of Regretsy in mind, I went crazy and created these two hats, the Crazy Nutcracker and the Crazy Santa, which has a real glass Santa ornament on it.

26 November 2012

I love diamond spike tiaras. Every royal family owns at least one of this style of tiara. The Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden wears one quite frequently, and it is hers which inspired this tiara. I made a post on this tiara back when I made it quite some time ago, but I've recently taken some new pictures of it, as I'm taking an Adobe InDesign class at the moment, and decided for my final that I wanted to make a book of my tiaras. I had my boyfriend take a bunch of pics of me wearing this gold and sequin-covered thing, as it's my most grand, royal tiara I've made. I've added some nice filters to the pic for the sake of the blog, but for my book, I want to make it look very old. I just need to find a photoshop effect that adds a film grain and a sepia tone to the picture. I know that is available on Photoshop, but for the life of me can't remember where it is.

This tiara is made out of polymer clay and wire that have been spray painted gold. Spray paint sticks incredibly well to polymer clay, so there is no need to go out and buy expensive colors of metallic polymer clay. Large stick-on rhinestones adorn each "spike", and silver star sequins litter the front of each spike.

I made this tiara a while ago. It's in my personal collection, as it was more of a piece of art to me than a tiara which I was making to sell on Etsy. Ideas pop into my head, and for this one, I was very inspired by glass and the way that light is refracted through it. The flowers were these beautiful hydrangea flowers that I pinched from a local apartment complex's landscaping. The flowers themselves came in all sorts of sizes, from large to very tiny. I pressed them for about a month between the pages of a heavy Faberge book I own, and needless to say, some of the pages got warped and stained from the flowers, even though I inserted folded sheets of paper to protect the book.

The wire frame of the tiara is made from a dark wire. Each clear disk is made from epoxy glue that I spread out into circles the sizes of the wire circles. Epoxy glue, awesomely enough, does not stick to those clear sheets that protect papers in a binder, so I do all my epoxy work on those. I then used glossy Mod Podge and affixed the flowers to the disks of epoxy. I then used more Epoxy, and when everything was dry, glued the epoxy/flower discs to the tiara frame. I wore this tiara once, it is rather nice. I've been wanting to experiment more with epoxy glue, so I may make more variations of this tiara, or even make earrings along this style.

This tiara is inspired off of a tiara I saw for sale in a shop in the mall. That tiara had a nice design, but it was all cheap plastic and made in China. Mine is completely handmade by me, out of wire!

I've never personally seen this brand, but the sew-on rhinestones work best. They have the little holes in them, which makes it easy to string wire through them. I normally use acrylic rhinestones, but it would also be nice to use glass ones like the ones pictured below.

19 September 2012

This is a remake of a tiara I made last year around the same time. It has a central heart element that I have handmade out of cardboard and painted red. Black wire acts as a support behind the whole tiara, and tendrils that I have painted gold spring up out of the tiara base.

A silver-tone watch face is affixed to the middle, and handmade polymer clay spade beads are positioned on either side. Glass beads surmount each space, and an acrylic bead tops the heart.

Such a beautiful tiara, I amaze myself sometimes.

Polymer clay is inexpensive, and is an awesome medium to use when constructing handmade jewelry items.

11 September 2012

I had to make a bat wing tiara, as Halloween is getting ever nearer, and no one will want to buy black bat tiaras the rest of the year! It is made completely out of black wire, and a purple acrylic rhinestone is affixed in the middle of the tiara, and two dark blue metallic glass beads are on the top and bottom of the rhinestone.

Spiders are really scary to me, but they offer such cool possibilities in the realm of art, that I couldn't resist making a Spider Tiara. It is made completely out of wire, and as a result, it is rather heavy!

My Halloween or Day of the Dead tiara. I am trying to make some cool Halloween-inspired tiaras, so this is the first. I got these really cute carved stone skull beads in different colors, and this tiara features a white one.

A simple Pearl Princess Tiara. I found these super awesome faux half pearl stick ons, and this tiara is the first to use them. I saw them before in the craft supply place near where I live, and I finally decided to buy them. They are really the neatest thing I've seen. I also wired them on, because adhesives don't work so well off of paper. But the fact that they stick on means you can place them wherever you want, and they don't move around!

I've been wanting to make more hairclips and combs. Small, petite pieces that can be worn whenever. This one utilizes red sparkling craft findings and red netted tulle material. Two long handmade wire combs come out it, allowing you to easily stick it into a ponytal.

I've got a high ponytail in my hair, and the clip looks rather cute when put off to the side of your head.

A dark Halloween-y tiara with sparkling rhinestones sprinkled all over it. I love gothic-inspired pieces, and since Halloween is coming up, thought I may as well make some!

The tiara design is sort of 3 different elements that are each a sort of tangle of wire. The piece is painted black with a gloss varnish. It's a rather cool piece, I think!

07 September 2012

I've been wanting to make a Star Trek Borg inspired tiara for a long time, and I finally got around to doing it. This is the sort of tiara I imagine the Borg Queen would wear if she wore a tiara. This is also Seven of Nine inspired, obviously, as I've got the additional eye piece that is a part of the tiara. I want to make another one of these for Halloween for myself, as I want to be a sort of Borg Bee Fairy (I couldn't decide what I wanted to be more for Halloween, so I combined all three). I think I could do it gold or maybe striped black and yellow like a bee. I'll have to see. This one is made all out of wire, and I've painted the wire black, and then dry brushed a metallic turquoise paint over the top. I could do any color, I would just have to mix it up!

The tiara part fits like a headband, and because the eyepiece is connected, the headband just needs to be adjusted so that the eyepiece rests on top of your eyebrow.

I went beach combing at Ocean Shores, Washington, a few weeks back, and I found dozens upon dozens of dead crab arms and claws. I scavenged up a bunch of them, pressure cooked them a couple of times, dried them out in the oven, and then finally they were ready for craft uses. These crab claws are attached to a metal band that I made, and the whole piece is sprayed with a nice high gloss read spray paint. They ended up looking like Devil horns, or mean bull horns, or something equally as lovely. These are perfect for so many Halloween costumes!

These crab claws have many sharp spikes on them, and I do not recommend them for children.

30 August 2012

I was originally making this for a little girl, but it turned out rather large, and I'm making a smaller tiara now, that still uses mostly the same elements. It is pretty much made completely out of wire, spray painted gold, and there are some pink acrylic hearts and gold faceted glass beads adorning it.

I've been wanting to making this tiara forever! It is one of those Burlesque-style mini crowns that lay off to one side on your head. It is based off of the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland. This thing took quite a long time to make, let me tell you!

I think this tiara turned out magnificently. It even has very nice, real freshwater pearls on it!

05 July 2012

I love to make custom pieces, and I get contacted 3 or 4 times a year to make custom tiaras. They are normally "Princess" tiaras from movies, but sometimes someone gives me an idea, and I go with it. People are always so happy to get my custom pieces, it is very flattering. Plus, doing custom works forces me to work outside of the work that I just feel like doing, which is good for me, creatively. I just got finished with 2 custom princess tiaras, and I sent a message to the Etsy buyer who requested them, so I don't know yet whether she likes them. Let's hope so!

My version of Princess Aurora's tiara from the old Disney Sleeping Beauty.

The tiara is lightweight, as is just a wire frame with painted masking tape and floral tape. I painted the tiara gold, as I thought it would be weird to make it yellow like it is in the cartoon. They didn't have the ability to make "gold" color in a cartoon back then!

My interpretation of Princess Rapunzel's tiara from the recent CGI movie Tangled. The three large gems are made from Epoxy glue, while the rest is made from wire, sequins, beads, and acrylic gemstones.

I had to hand paint all the wire and ribbon gold, as spray painting it would have been too messy, and would have gotten all over the clear gemstones, which I attaches to the tiara frame first.

12 June 2012

I know this looks like an awesome Psychadelic tiara, but this is what you get when you use polymer clay that was donated to you, and it is thrown into a bag all together. The actual colors don't matter, as I ended up painting the whole thing gold anyways. Each spike element is made separately, where I start with the largest middle piece and work outward. I use a piece of wire and poke holes into each polymer clay piece, bake it in the oven, then string it on wire. Beads are used as spacers between each clay piece.